P2V clustered servers for DR purposes

[taylorb]

Looking for a little advice on P2V'ing a set of physical clustered win2003 servers to a VMware host that we are shipping off site for DR. We are somewhat in a bind as the guy that set up these clusters (and the only one that knows clustering) kind of disappeared on us. I have to have this pair on the DR host (ESX 4) ready to ship in 2 weeks. One server in the Cluster has file shares and the other has SQL and more file shares. I do not care if they are still a cluster after P2V as they are just for data recoverability. Any tips on how to proceed? Can I just p2v each as a standalone and they will come up thinking the cluster is broken, but their own resources will still work fine?

Thanks.

[PaulSvirin]

Here is an elegant solution about cluster P2Ving : http://communities.vmware.com/thread/52132

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Paul Svirin

StarWind Software developer ( http://www.starwindsoftware.com )

[IamTHEvilONE]

converting clusters is complicated enough as is (see the above KB that was provided)

let alone converter or a p2v solution is not good enough (for me) to be a disaster recovery solution. Too many things would change (IP/SID/MAC), and which means a lot of configuration do be done should a disaster actually occur.

I've had people trying to use scheduled tasks in the vCenter Converter Plugin ... it's just not consistent enough to be a DR solution.

Converter works fine as a 1 off migration, but not as your backup tool. You should really look for something else to do that.

Regards,

EvilOne

VMware vExpert 2009

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